Biblical literature, four bodies of written works: the Old Testament writings according to the Hebrew canon; intertestamental works, including the Old Testament Apocrypha; the New Testament writings; and the New Testament Apocrypha.

Two-page spread from Johannes Gutenberg’s 42-line Bible, c. 1450–55.

Library of Congress, Rosenwald Rare Book Collection

The Old Testament is a collection of writings that was first compiled and preserved as the sacred books of the ancient Hebrew people. As the Bible of the Hebrews and their Jewish descendants down to the present, these books have been perhaps the most decisive single factor in the preservation of the Jews as a cultural entity and Judaism as a religion. The Old Testament and the New Testament—a body of writings that chronicle the origin and early dissemination of Christianity—constitute the Bible of the Christians.

The literature of the Bible, encompassing the Old and New Testaments and various noncanonical works, has played a special role in the history and culture of the Western world and has itself become the subject of intensive critical study. This field of scholarship, including exegesis (critical interpretation) and hermeneutics (the science of interpretive principles), has assumed an important place in the theologies of Judaism and Christianity. The methods and purposes of exegesis and hermeneutics are treated below. For the cultural and historical contexts in which this literature developed, see Judaism and Christianity.

Influence and significance

Historical and cultural importance

In Judaism

After the kingdoms of Israel and Judah had fallen, in 722 bce (before the Common Era, equivalent to bc) and 587/586 bce, respectively, the Hebrew people outlived defeat, captivity, and the loss of their national independence, largely because they possessed writings that preserved their history and traditions. Many of them did not return to Palestine after their exile. Those who did return did so to rebuild a temple and reconstruct a society that was more nearly a religious community than an independent nation. The religion found expression in the books of the Old Testament: books of the Law (Torah), history, prophecy, and poetry. The survival of the Jewish religion and its subsequent incalculable influence in the history of Western culture are difficult to explain without acknowledgment of the importance of the biblical writings.

When the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 ce (Common Era, equivalent to ad), the historical, priestly sacrificial worship centred in it came to an end and was never resumed. But the religion of the Jewish people had by then gone with them into many lands, where it retained its character and vitality because it still drew its nurture from biblical literature. The Bible was with them in their synagogues, where it was read, prayed, and taught. It preserved their identity as a people, inspired their worship, arranged their calendar, permeated their family lives; it shaped their ideals, sustained them in persecution, and touched their intellects. Whatever Jewish talent and genius have contributed to Western civilization is due in no small degree to the influence of the Bible.

In Christianity

The Hebrew Bible is as basic to Christianity as it is to Judaism. Without the Old Testament, the New Testament could not have been written and there could have been no man like Jesus; Christianity could not have been what it became. This has to do with cultural values, basic human values, as much as with religious beliefs. The Genesis stories of prehistoric events and people are a conspicuous example. The Hebrew myths of creation have superseded the racial mythologies of Latin, Germanic, Slavonic, and all other Western peoples. This is not because they contain historically factual information or scientifically adequate accounts of the universe, the beginning of life, or any other subject of knowledge, but because they furnish a profoundly theological interpretation of the universe and human existence, an intellectual framework of reality large enough to make room for developing philosophies and sciences.

This biblical structure of ideas is shared by Jews and Christians. It centres in the one and only God, the Creator of all that exists. All things have their place in this structure of ideas. All mankind is viewed as a unity, with no race existing for itself alone. The Covenant people (i.e., the Hebrews in the Old Testament and Christians in the New Testament) are chosen not to enjoy special privileges but to serve God’s will toward all nations. The individual’s sacred rights condemn his abuse, exploitation, or neglect by the rich and powerful or by society itself. Widows, orphans, the stranger, the friendless, and the helpless have a special claim. God’s will and purpose are viewed as just, loving, and ultimately prevailing. The future is God’s, when his rule will be fully established.

The Bible went with the Christian Church into every land in Europe, bearing its witness to God. The church, driven in part by the power of biblical themes, called men to ethical and social responsibility, to a life answerable to God, to love for all men, to sonship in the family of God, and to citizenship in a kingdom yet to be revealed. The Bible thus points to a way of life never yet perfectly embodied in any society in history. Weighing every existing kingdom, government, church, party, and organization, it finds them wanting in that justice, mercy, and love for which they were intended.

Major themes and characteristics

The Bible is the literature of faith, not of scientific observation or historical demonstration. God’s existence as a speculative problem has no interest for the biblical writers. What is problematical for them is the human condition and destiny before God.

The great biblical themes are about God, his revealed works of creation, provision, judgment, deliverance, his covenant, and his promises. The Bible sees what happens to mankind in the light of God’s nature, righteousness, faithfulness, mercy, and love. The major themes about mankind relate to man’s rebellion, his estrangement and perversion. Man’s redemption, forgiveness, reconciliation, the gifts of grace, the new life, the coming kingdom, and the final consummation of man’s hope are all viewed as the gracious works of God.

The Old Testament contains several types of literature: there are narratives combined with rules and instructions (Torah, or Pentateuch) and anecdotes of Hebrew persons, prophets, priests, kings, and their women (Former Prophets). There is an antiracist love story (Ruth), the story of a woman playing a dangerous game (Esther), and one of a preacher who succeeded too well (Jonah). There is a collection of epigrams and prudential wisdom (Proverbs) and a philosophic view of existence with pessimism and poise (Ecclesiastes). There is poetry of the first rank, devotional poetry in the Psalms, and erotic poetry in the Song of Songs. Lamentations is a poetic elegy, mourning over fallen Jerusalem. Job is dramatic theological dialogue. The books of the great prophets consist mainly of oral addresses in poetic form.

The New Testament also consists of a variety of literary forms. Acts is historical narrative, actually a second volume following Luke. A Gospel is not a history in the ordinary sense but an arrangement of remembered acts and sayings of Jesus retold to win faith in him. There is one apocalypse, Revelation (a work describing the intervention of God in history). But the largest class of New Testament writings is epistolary, consisting of the letters of Paul and other Apostles. Originally written to local groups of Christians, the letters were preserved in the New Testament and were given the status of doctrinal and ethical treatises.

Influences

On Western civilization

The Bible brought its view of God, the universe, and mankind into all the leading Western languages and thus into the intellectual processes of Western man. The Greek translation of the Old Testament made it accessible in the Hellenistic period (c. 300 bce–c. 300 ce) and provided a language for the New Testament and for the Christian liturgy and theology of the first three centuries. The Bible in Latin shaped the thought and life of Western people for a thousand years. Bible translation led to the study and literary development of many languages. Luther’s translation of the Bible in the 16th century has been called the beginning of modern German. The Authorized Version (English) of 1611 (King James Version) and the others that preceded it caught the English language at the blooming of its first maturity. Since the invention of printing (mid-15th century), the Bible has become more than the translation of an ancient Oriental literature. It has not seemed a foreign book, and it has been the most available, familiar, and dependable source and arbiter of intellectual, moral, and spiritual ideals in the West.

Millions of modern people who do not think of themselves as religious live nevertheless with basic presuppositions that underlie the biblical literature. It would be impossible to calculate the effect of such presuppositions on the changing ideas and attitudes of Western people with regard to the nature and purpose of government, social institutions, and economic theories. Theories and ideals usually rest on prior moral assumptions—i.e., on basic judgments of value. In theory, the West has moved from the divine right of kings to the divinely given rights of every citizen, from slavery through serfdom to the intrinsic worth of every person, from freedom to own property to freedom for everyone from the penalties of hopeless poverty. Though there is a wide difference between the ideal and the actual, biblical literature continues to pronounce its judgment and assert that what ought to be can still be.

On the modern secular age

The assumption of many people is that the Bible has lost much of its importance in a secularized world; that is implied whenever the modern period is called the post-Judeo-Christian era. In most ways the label is appropriate. The modern period seems to be a time in which unprecedented numbers of people have discarded traditional beliefs and practices of both Judaism and Christianity. But the influence of biblical literature neither began nor ended with doctrinal propositions or codes of behaviour. Its importance lies not merely in its overtly religious influence but also, and perhaps more decisively, in its pervasive effect on the thinking and feeling processes, the attitudes and sense of values that, whether recognized as biblical or not, still help to make people what they are.

The deepest influence of biblical literature may be found in the arts of Western people, their music and, especially, in their best poetry, drama, and creative fiction. Many of the most moving and illuminating interpretations of biblical material—stories, themes, and characters—are made today by novelists, playwrights, and poets who write simply as human beings, not as adherents of any religion. There are two views of the human condition that scholars have attributed to biblical influence and that have become dominant in Western literature.

The first of these is the view that the mystery of existence and destiny is implicit in every man and woman. In contrast to the canons of classical tragedy, a person of any rank or station may experience the extremes of happiness or misery, exaltation or tragedy. An aged Jew of Rembrandt’s paintings or an illiterate black woman of Faulkner’s novels can reach the height of human dignity. The arts also put down the mighty from their seats and exalt those of low degree. Any man may be Everyman, the symbol of all human possibility.

The second view of the human condition is that the time of encountering all reality is now, and the place is here, in man’s workaday activities and contingencies, whatever they may be. To be human is to know one short life in mortal flesh, in which the past and future are dimensions of the present. It is now or never that the choice is made, the offer of the gift of life accepted or declined. Any kingdom there is must be entered at once or lost forever. It is here in the actual situation of work and play, of love and need, and not in some far-off better time and place, that the crisis is reached and passed, the issue settled, and the record closed.

These views, though here stated in language that has theological overtones, are not confined to adherents of Judaism or Christianity. They are characteristically Western views of the human condition. That they can be put in words reminiscent of the Bible indicates that the representation of man in Western literature is indeed conditioned by biblical literature.